Evelyn Farkas:
Yes. Yes, I mean, Amna, first of all, everybody agrees the Europeans need to do more in terms of providing for their own defense and the defense of the continent.
But let’s not be naive. Vladimir Putin is not afraid of the Europeans without the United States backing up the Europeans, which is to say, he’s afraid of NATO, and he will not make another move on Ukraine if Ukraine is a NATO. However, if Ukraine is not a NATO, meaning — and that there’s a security guarantee just from the Europeans, that is not going to be sufficient to stop Vladimir Putin.
Let’s remember Vladimir Putin has an imperialist agenda. He wants to take Ukraine. He’s not going to stop there. He’s going to go for Moldova. He’s going to go for Georgia. He’s going to go for the former NATO states, the Baltic states. And guess who’s watching all this? His partner. They’re closely allied.
There’s no way to split the China-Russia threats from one another. China is watching. China will make a move on Taiwan and China will not stop there. China has disputed territories with Japan, the Philippines. We have alliances with those countries. I can go on. You don’t have time.
But the reality is that it’s very dangerous if we leave the security guarantee purely to the Europeans.
